Posts Tagged ‘branding’

The Business of Happiness

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

By Henna Merchant

We are all in the business of happiness, no matter the means. We make our daily living by serving others and delivering value to others.

Most of us know this regardless of education or experience, but as someone who operates a service-based business, my job is to help others be aware of it and optimize their assets to their fullest gains.

Our respective success ultimately depends on the extent to which we connect with others, and how skilled we are at establishing and maintaining relationships. This is nothing new. It is our personalities that we leverage to achieve relationships, and successful brands and companies are run by genuine people who practice this standard of communication.

One of my mentors, Rohit Bhargava, Senior Vice President of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, a genuinely nice person (and quite brilliant, if I might say so) is on the verge of launching his second book titled “Likeanomics,” the premise of which is that relationships are based on real interactions, with personality and humanity.

Prior to this book, Rohit wrote (and disclaimer: I was formerly his publicist on this one) Personality Not Included, a practical guide for brands on how to communicate with their publics and build successful relationships. As a persuasive communications practitioner, I mention these books because the concepts are powerful and they have helped me better serve my clients and also everyone else in my life. And they offer a great reminder: that we are all in the business of happiness.

Henna Merchant is the Principal of Clicked :: Digital PR & Marketing Communications, an agency that combines digital influence, social and traditional media, public relations and marketing to produce a persuasive communications mix.

Branding (Part 2 of 3)

Friday, March 4th, 2011

By Adam Mefford

(part two of three in a series on branding)

Last month I wrote about the most critical element of branding: a clearly articulated strategy for the business. Now let’s look at design, which is how most people think of branding.

Ideally, the product or service blends with the intangible meaning of a brand. The brand comes across as one unified, magical experience—hitting on all levels of body, mind and imagination.

In design training for branding, creative students develop systems to define aesthetic choices for composing and executing the assets of a company. This particular challenge is very specialized and appeals to a small percentage of creative designers.

At the start of your project you need one of these people to work with you on an identity system for your business. This translates your group character and strategy into specific criteria for designing the required materials.

Hiring someone with experience is worth your money—I’d recommend spending no less than $4K. You need a unique set of assets that will endure for at least five years and accommodate all future areas of design.

The goal is for your materials to give a sense of the logic and purpose uniting everything you do. This builds momentum and trust, and leaves a lasting impression on customers.

Adam Mefford is an alumni of Art Center College. He is launching a platform for entrepreneurship in Los Angeles known as Currency.

E-mail him at Adam Mefford

Twitter Is A Dream Come True For Brand Awareness

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

It is undeniable that Twitter has quickly become a mainstay of social media alongside Facebook. There are many key reasons for its popularity and its rise in popularity, like the simplicity, micro-blogging platform, and mobile application. Twitter’s growth is astounding; in April 2010 they released some of their statistics including over 105 million registered users, 300,000 new registered users per day, and 180 million unique visitors per month. Simply said, people are spending their time reading tweets and making tweets.

Businesses are now realizing the potential of creating brand awareness on Twitter as people continue to shift their attention away from traditional forms of media. If managed effectively, companies can use Twitter to reach a large, targeted audience regardless of industry. A presence on Twitter allows companies to be found by users searching for their products and services because they can actively attract potential customers by providing useful content and information.

Twitter provides a platform that allows businesses to find targeted prospects, then engage them by providing relevant information and through direct, real-time conversation. Twitter makes it easy for us to help our clients manage relationships with new prospects and existing customers. This is much more powerful than one way marketing of yesterday. This new interactive marketing allows a dialogue that can help match the needs of the consumer and the benefits being offered by businesses.

Vince Yuen founded TweetsByUs, a Twitter & Facebook management company, after experiencing the benefits of social media in creating brand awareness and driving traffic to a site he co-founded, toptentopten.com. Since then, he has been constantly learning about how social media marketing works and how it is evolving. He holds an MBA from the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego and a BA in Business Economics from UC Santa Barbara.